Oops! Fox News Admits Being Least Trusted News Network – Slams Trump

Monmouth University recently released a poll entitled ‘Fake News’ Threat to Media; Editorial Decisions, Outside Actors at Fault which found that CNN and MSNBC are both trusted by nearly half of all Americans, but Fox News and President Trump are trusted by a third or less of Americans. The poll also found that most Americans believe that the mainstream media both injects fake stories into their coverage, and makes biased decisions on what news to cover, and not cover.

This presents a problem for Fox News, the Original Gangsta when it comes to “fake news”, which they tried to address on their Tight Shot program on Sunday. Fortunately for the world, they screwed up right off the bat by putting up a graphic that showed they were the least trusted of the big three news networks.

This almost gave former CNN “Reliable Sources” anchor Howard Kurtz, who sank into the swamp at Fox News after his history of mistakes piled up and cost him his job with the Daily Beast, and painting the writing on the wall at CNN, a mild coronary.

Take That Down Please

As soon as the graphic landed on the screen, Kurtz spoke with terse panic in his voice.

“Uh, this is not the graphic we’re looking for. Hold off! Take that down please!”

Later Kurtz would respond to stories by focusing on his reaction to the graphic on screen to say that it was just shown out of sequence. OK, we can accept that and move on. After all, after the graphic came off screen, Kurtz did what he does best and recover from an error and keep right on rolling as if there was never a screw-up. Which was unsurprising. But what was surprising — really surprising, and to his credit — was where the segment went from there. And that is our focus…

After breaking down some numbers from the poll, Kurtz turned to his guest, longtime Republican Strategist Frank Luntz, a man who’s life’s work has been shaping fake news narratives to help Republicans win.

“Has Donald Trump won his campaign to make us all think we’re awash in fake news,” Kurtz asked.

“In a word, Yes. He has.” Luntz replied, before proceeding to say something very unexpected for someone with his resume.

“And the impact of that I think, is significant. Because, how do you hold a President accountable? How do you hold the Congress, how do you hold the Democrats accountable if nobody trusts anyone now? The fact is, we get our news to affirm, rather than inform. And that’s one of the greatest threats to the health of this democracy.”

Hold on. Did Frank Luntz actually say that on Fox News? Frank Luntz, the legendary Republican spin doctor who admitted going into a depression after Obama was re-elected? Luntz who helped Newt Gingrich draft the “Contract with America”, perhaps the most disingenuous political document in American history? Frank Luntz who Jonathan Chait profiled as the man who’d “Spin at All Costs“? Frank Luntz who spun the Orwellian nature of so many republican policies by fabricating a completely opposite definition of the term, to say “to be ‘Orwellian‘ is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.” Which caused Rational Wiki to proclaim that Luntz was the man who made George Orwell roll over in his grave? Frank Luntz who has been a fixture both in the members only Republican haunts of Washington D.C., and the guest chair on Fox News, to cheerlead whatever bullshit narrative they were pushing at the time – which he probably had a hand in dreaming up, dial testing, or spinning into shape?

A Breakthrough

Folks, this is a breakthrough. Fox News, which was conceived by Roger Ailes while working for that infamous, nefarious crook Richard Nixon, to be a propaganda network that would be like any dictatorship’s state TV, except for the Republican Party. And that is exactly what it has been since the day the network launched.

The network, burst onto the scene by causing enough confusion about who won the 2000 election to get the man ultimately proven to have won, former Vice President to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, to concede in the interest of avoiding a Constitutional crisis. And it has been causing Constitutional crises ever since.

That first crisis began with George W. Bush’s cousin calling the election for him, while other networks had called it for Gore. Then proceeded with the “Brooks Brothers Riot“, a genuine fake news spectacle dreamed up and executed by Luntz counterpart in the GOP, Roger Stone, who like Ailes was a Nixon Administration alumnus (and even has a tattoo of Nixon’s face). A man who went on to be a Donald Trump’s spin doctor, perhaps initially over his obvious racist feelings about the Obamas, and his guilt over the Bush Presidency, and who now appears to perhaps be mixed up in the Trump-Russia scandal, and potential acts of treason.

The “riot” was only the first of several fake news spectacles, conspiracy theories, and right wing propaganda hogwash that Fox “News” engaged in. Causing electoral upsets and Constitutional crises aplenty over the years. But now, as Trump – the monster Fox News created – derides all journalists as terrible people and all news as “fake news” unless it is flattering or helpful to him (even when the news he deems to be real, is really fake)… now Fox News finds that this may have backfired.

Not only are they losing the trust they had brainwashed into people over the years with high production values, coiffed hosts, short skirts, and subtle psycho-warfare targeting the gullible and fearful. But as the gaslighting Gasbag in Chief spews lies spasmodically, kleptomaniacally snatching up every spotlight to publicly perjur himself in a pathological frenzy as he hurtles headlong into what all the right wingers who’ve hitched their wagon to his meteoric falling star fear is an inevitable “perjury trap” for a guy who can’t stop lying for ten seconds, Fox News is being dragged down with them.

Worse yet, as this sinks in to them in the swampy halls of Fox News HQ, where recent defections have shaken them to the core, comes the news that Trump, who derides the “deep state” at every opportunity, is creating a media watchlist through his Department of Homeland Security appointee, who tells us all that it’s perfectly normal in a democracy to build databases of journalists, bloggers, podcasters, camera persons, producers, editors, etc., and place a “sentiment” label on them. And that he’s doing so while it looks like there’s about to be a huge wave election that will sweep the Democratic party into power on Capitol Hill, followed by an impeachment, and hearings where just such a list could come back to haunt the original Mack Daddies of OG Fake News, Fox News.

Which might be why they’re singing a different tune, for the time being.